A thief used a Waymo while stealing yoga clothes in San Francisco last January and police have yet to catch him.
This may seem counterintuitive given widespread concerns that Waymo vehicles and other robotaxis are rolling surveillance machines. But this curious case, reported by the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, sheds new light on how Waymo handles images captured by its cars.
While Waymo captures and stores images of rides, it is unknown how long that data is stored. What is certain, according to the report, is that he was gone “when the search warrant was filed in April.” Even more interesting is the detail that the police could not identify the thief through the exterior camera images because they had been “blurred for privacy reasons.”
The Waymo account data apparently didn’t help either. The thief took the Waymo ride to a yoga studio called Hot 8 Yoga, where he entered, took the clothes and returned to the robotaxi, according to the business’s own security footage. But the account information Waymo gave to police as part of the search warrant “did not lead police to the suspect,” according to the Chronicle.
